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Chapter Nineteen
The Sacrifice
The glaring afternoon had drawn to a close.
Camillo Morini, after a heavy day’s work in the silence of the big old library at San Donato shaded from the sun-glare, rose, and joining Mary, went out along the hill to enjoy the bel fresco of the departing day. The Italian habit is to go out and wander at sundown, and when up at his villa His Excellency always made it a rule to take a stroll through the cool pine woods, generally accompanied by Mary; for his wife was not a good walker, and seldom ventured far. Therefore father and daughter, in the two hours preceding dinner, frequently made excursions on foot through the smiling vineyards and great pine forests around the magnificent old mansion.
They had skirted the mediaeval walls of the village and passed down the old cypress avenue, saluted on every side by their contadini, then striking off on a bypath through the wood they halted at a point known by the countryfolk as the Massa del Fate – or Fairy’s Rock – where there opened suddenly before them a magnificent view – Tuscany, the paradise of Europe, in the sundown.
Surely nothing could be so beautiful as the lines of the Arno valley, the gentle inclination of the hills, and the soft fugitive outlines of the mountains which bounded them. A singular tint and most peculiar harmony united the earth, the sky, and the wide winding river. All the surfaces were blended at their extremities by means of an insensible gradation of colour, and without the possibility of ascertaining the point at which one ended or another began. It appeared ideal, possessing a beauty beyond nature; it was nevertheless the genuine light of old-world Tuscany.
The Minister of War, in his white drill suit and straw hat, a trifle negligent of attire as he always was when he was up there in that remote retreat, halted at the break in the high dark pines, gazed out upon the marvellous panorama, and inhaled a deep breath of the cool, refreshing wind that came up from the valley with the sundown.
After hours of intricate work in his darkened study he stood there to refresh himself, while Mary, in pale blue with a big straw hat, was at his side, her eyes turned away up the valley, reflecting upon some meaning words he had just uttered.
Mary often came to that lonely point on the high-up estate to enjoy the grand scene of departing day. In that hour, when the evening bells came up from the white villages dotted far below, the summits of the Apennines appeared to consist of lapis-lazuli and pale gold, while their bases and sides were enveloped in a vapour which had a tint now violet, now purple. Beautiful clouds like light chariots borne on the wind with inimitable grace that came from seaward made one easily comprehend the appearance of the Olympian deities under that mythological sky. Ancient Florence seemed to have stretched out all the purple of her Cardinals, her Signori, and her Medici, and spread it under the last steps of the God of Day.
“Well?” asked the Minister, as he watched the girl’s beautiful face set full to the dying sunset and saw the far-off look in her wonderful eyes.
“I have nothing to say, father – nothing,” was her quiet answer as she turned to him, and he saw that she was on the point of tears.
“Then you are content that it should be so? I mean you will permit me to give a favourable reply to the count?” he said, not without some hesitation. He had aged visibly since those quiet days in rural England, and the lines upon his pale brow gave him an expression of deep anxiety.
She sighed, and for a few moments made no response.
“Is it your wish that I should marry him?” she asked in a low, mechanical tone, her face pale, her hands trembling.
“I have no desire to place undue pressure upon you, my dear,” he said, placing his hand kindly upon her shoulder. “I merely ask you what response you wish me to give. He came to me while I was sitting alone in Rome three nights ago, and requested permission to pay his court to you.”
“And what response did you give?” she inquired in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
“I told him that I desired to hear your own views before giving him an answer.”
She was again silent, her face turned to the darkening valley. The sundown in Italy disappears less quickly than in England, for when the tints are on the point of vanishing they suddenly break out again and illumine some other point of the horizon. Twilight succeeds twilight, and the charm of closing day is prolonged.
“And what is your wish, father?” she asked presently, still looking blankly before her; for those grey fading lights seemed to be but the reflection of her own fading life and happiness.
“Well, Mary,” he said, his hand still upon her shoulder, “let me speak frankly and candidly. This morning I discussed the matter fully with your mother, and we both came to the conclusion that the count is a very eligible man. Neither of us desire you to marry if you entertain no love for him, but both in England and in Italy we have noticed for a year past that you have not been averse to his attentions, and – well, I may as well tell you quite plainly, my dear – we have been much gratified to think that the attraction has been mutual. Yet,” he added, “it lies with you entirely to accept or to reject him.”
“It would please you, father, if I became the Comtesse Dubard, would it not?” she asked, tears that were beyond her control springing to her eyes.
“It would please both of us,” he said in a low, earnest voice. “But you yourself must decide. That he will make you a good husband, I have no doubt. Yet, as I have already said, as your father I would be the very last to endeavour to force you to marry a man you do not love.”
She did not reply. He stood gazing upon her face, and his own thoughts were sad ones. Soon, very soon, the blow might fall, and then his wife and daughter would be left alone. He was, therefore, anxious to see her married before that catastrophe, which he knew was inevitable.
When the count had sat with him that evening making his request, he recollected the strange story Mary had told him regarding the secret examination of his papers. It was curious – so curious and so utterly devoid of motive that he could see no reason in it. Yet if that Frenchman had really discovered certain things concealed behind that green-painted steel door, it was to his interest that he should become his son-in-law and so preserve the secret.
Yes, he was anxious to see his daughter married to that man to whom he had taken such a personal liking, yet he affected to leave the decision entirely in her own hands.
She spoke at last in a hard, tuneless voice, as though her youth and life were slowly dying just as surely as the day was fading.
“If it is your wish, father, that I should become his wife, you may give him an affirmative answer. But – ”
And she suddenly burst into a torrent of hot tears.
“Ah no! no!” her father cried, touching her pale cheek tenderly. “No. Do not give way, dear. I have no desire that you should marry this man if you yourself do not really love him. Perhaps your mother has been mistaken, but by various signs and looks that both of us noticed in Rome and in England, we believed that you entertained for him a warm affection.”
“I know that my marriage would please you,” she said. “Mother gave me to understand that two months ago, therefore,” – and she paused as though she could not utter the words which were to decide her fate – “therefore I am willing to accept him.”
“Ah, Mary!” he exclaimed quickly, his face brightening, for her decision aroused hope within him. “I need not tell you what happiness your words bring to me. I confess to you that I have hoped that you would give your consent, for I would rather see you the wife of the count, with wealth and position, than married to any other man I know. He loves you – of that I am convinced. Has he never told you so?”
She did not answer for a few moments. She was reflecting upon that scene in the little salon in Rome when he had revealed himself to her in his true colours.
“Yes,” she answered at last in that same hard, colourless voice. “He told me so once.”
He attributed her blank, despairing look to the natural emotion of the moment. It was the great crisis of her young life, for she was deciding her future. He was in ignorance of how already she had made the compact with Dubard – of how she had decided to sacrifice herself in order to save him.
Her father, in ignorance of the truth of how nobly she was acting, went on to analyse the young Frenchman’s good qualities and relate to her all that he had learnt regarding him.
“His youth has been no better and no worse than that of any young man brought up in Paris,” he said, “yet from the information I have gathered it seems that he has sown his wild oats long ago, and for the past couple of years he has given up racing and gambling and all such vices of youth, and has become a perfect model of what a young man should be. Men who know him in Paris speak highly of him as a man of real grit – a man with a future before him. You do not think, Mary,” he went on, “that I should have welcomed him as a guest at my table if I were not sure that he was a man worthy the name of friend?”
“Ah!” she sighed, “you have, my dear father, sometimes been disappointed in your friendships, I fear. Angelo Borselli, for instance, has been your friend through many years.”
“Angelo!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know. But I am speaking of Jules – of the man you have consented to marry.”
A slight hardness showed at the corners of her mouth at mention of the man who had so cleverly entrapped her. She knew that escape was impossible. He could place her father in a position of triumph over his enemies, and in return claimed herself. Ah! if she could only speak the truth; if she could only take her father into her confidence, and show him the reason she so readily gave her consent to a union that was odious to her! Yet she knew that if she gave him the slightest suspicion of her self-sacrifice he would withhold his consent, and the result would be dire disaster.
She knew her father’s brave, unflinching nobility of character. Rather than he would allow her to marry a man whom she hated and mistrusted, he would face ruin – even death.
And for that reason she, pale and silent, gazing into the rising mists, accepted the man who had made her father’s honour the price of her own life.
“Tell the count,” she said, in a voice broken by emotion, “tell him that I am ready to be his wife.”
And her father, gladdened at what he, in his ignorance, believed to be a wise decision, bent to her and pressed his lips to her cheek with fatherly affection, in a vain endeavour to kiss her tears away.
They were not tears of emotion, but of a sweet and tender woman’s blank despair.
Chapter Twenty
Tells the Truth
On the following afternoon, in consequence of a telegram, the Minister of War drove into Florence, and met Vito Ricci at the club.
He seldom took the train to Florence because, on account of his position, the obsequious officials treated him with so much ceremony. He was a modest man, who at heart hated all bowing officialdom, much preferring to drive through the rich vineyards of the Arno valley to being received at the station by all the officials and having the ordinary traffic stopped on his arrival.
The Florence Club, an institution run upon English lines, is one of the most exclusive in Europe. It occupies the whole of a huge flat in the new Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele, handsomely appointed, with fine spacious rooms overlooking the busy centre of Florentine life. Its members are mostly men of the highest social standing in Italy, together with a select few of rich English and Americans, to whom membership gives the hall-mark of rank in that complex cosmopolitan world. In winter and spring its rooms are well-filled and its bridge-tables are well patronised, but in summer and autumn, when all Florence is away in the mountains or at the sea, it is deserted and handed over to the care of a couple of waiters, who scarcely see a member from one week’s end to the other.
The Deputy Ricci had telegraphed that he had no time to come up to San Donato, as he could only spend three hours in Florence; therefore the club was the most convenient place where they could meet and consult undisturbed. The urgency of Ricci’s message had aroused the other’s apprehensions that something was amiss.
“Ah!” cried the deputy in relief as the Minister entered the small card-room where he stood impatiently awaiting him. “I began to fear that my telegram had not reached you.” And the pair having shaken hands, Ricci went to the door and locked it.
Then when they crossed to the window, which gave a view of the wide-open piazza with its colossal statue in the centre, Ricci said —
“I left Rome this morning at nine, and I return by the express at six. I came here purposely to see you.”
“Has something occurred?” asked His Excellency quickly, glancing at the dark face of the Piedmontese lawyer who sat in the Chamber of Deputies and made politics his living.
“Yes,” was Ricci’s answer in a low half-whisper. “You recollect our conversation when we met last – about the impending crisis?”
“Yes. You promised, for certain considerations, to turn the political tide in my favour.”
“I have tried to do so, but have failed,” said the other in a deep, serious voice.
“Failed?” gasped the Minister as, in an instant, all the light died out of his face.
“The Opposition is too strong,” he explained. “Borselli has so completely won over the Socialists that he can cause them to dance to any tune he pleases.”
Camillo Morini’s face was blanched. Ruin was before him – ruin, utter and complete. He had trusted in Vito, feeling confidence in that adventurer’s ingenuity and influence. More than once this adventurer had cleverly turned the tide of popular thought, for certain journals were always open to write what the popular deputy for Asti dictated, and of course received substantial bribes for so doing. Yet at this most crucial moment he had failed!
“I made you the payment on condition that you were successful in rendering me the service,” remarked His Excellency hoarsely.
“I know, I know,” was the other’s response. “I have brought back the money to repay you.” And he took from his leather wallet a banker’s draft, which he handed to the Minister.
The tall, thin, refined-looking man stood motionless, his eyes fixed for a moment upon the slip of paper thus offered back to him. He recognised that the efforts of his secret agent, whose services had so often been invaluable, were of no avail, that his doom was sealed.
“No. Keep it, Vito,” he said hoarsely, with a dry, hollow laugh, that sarcasm born of desperation. “You have earned it – keep it.”
The other raised his shoulders in regret, and then, with a word of thanks, replaced the draft in his pocket.
There was a long silence. A company of bersaglieri, those well-set-up men with their round hats and cock’s plumes, were crossing the piazza, marching to the fanfare of trumpets, and behind them came a company of the Misericordia, that mediaeval confraternity disguised in their long black gowns with slits for their eyes, passing with their ambulance on an errand of mercy.
Morini gazed upon that weird, tragic procession hurrying across the square, and within him there arose grave and morbid reflections. He had worked for Italy, had given his whole soul to the reform of the army and the perfecting of the defences of the nation he had loved so well. It was more the fault of the system than his own that he had been guilty of dishonesty. The other members of the Cabinet were equally guilty of misappropriating the national funds. They were, indeed, compelled to do so in order to keep up their position, to maintain and pay the secret agents they employed, and to bribe the men of influence from seeking to expose their thefts.
Surely poor strangled Italy under the régime of his lamented Majesty King Umberto was in very evil case!
“I have trusted in you, Vito,” the Minister said simply, when he again found tongue, for the ugly truth had utterly staggered him.
“And I have done my best, your Excellency,” was the other’s reply. “In the Camera and out of it, I have worked unceasingly in order to try and win you back into favour, but Borselli is far too strong. He has influential friends, who believe they will obtain appointments and money if he is in office as Minister of War. Hence they are working by every means to place him in power.”
“And to cause my downfall and ruin!” murmured the unhappy man, staring blankly down at the piazza, still dazzlingly white in the hot sun-glare.
The adventurer sighed. To Camillo Morini he owed everything, and was conscious of the fact. He had no words to express his regret at his failure, for he knew too well all that it meant to the man before him.
“The success of the French secret service upon the Alpine frontier is the chief capital of the Opposition,” Ricci explained. “They say you have connived at it, and that Solaro was assisted by your daughter, the Signorina Mary.”
“Solaro assisted by her! How?”
“They have discovered that he was her friend. They were noticed together in Rome a year ago, when they allege that she gave him certain information gathered from your papers, which, in due course, reached the French Ministry of War!”
“Impossible?” declared the Minister. “They are acquainted, I know. But my daughter would never assist a traitor. It is infamous?”
“I quite agree with you. I cannot believe the signorina guilty of any such action. Yet the truth remains that the secrets of the Tresenta are actually in the hands of France.”
“I know,” groaned the unhappy man. “I know, Vito. But Solaro is disgraced and imprisoned. Surely that is enough for them?”
“No. You misunderstand. They are raising the cry everywhere that Italy is in danger – that you personally are culpable.”
“They will say next that I myself have sold the plans to France!” he cried bitterly.
“Ah! you know the kind of men Borselli has behind him – the most unscrupulous set of office-seekers in Italy. They will hesitate at nothing in order to arouse the public indignation against you. The fire is already kindled, and they are now fanning it into a flame. I tried to extinguish it. I offered a dozen bribes in various quarters, knowing that you would willingly pay to secure safety – but all were rejected because of Borselli’s promise to them of fat emoluments in the future.”
“Italy!” cried the Minister. “Oh, Italy! Must you fall into the hands of such a gang of thieves? I have done my best. Dishonesty has been forced upon me by this very man who now seeks to hound me out of office and take my place. I have been blind, Vito,” he added, “utterly blind.”
“Yes,” sighed the other, “I fear you have. Borselli has laid his plans too well, and arranged the conspiracy with too deep a cunning, to fail. I naturally believed that he could be fought with his own weapons, but I have found myself mistaken. We must, alas! face the worst! To-morrow the Socialists are to raise the question of Tresenta in the Camera; the vote will be taken, the Government defeated, and the whole blame will fall upon yourself. Borselli’s organs of the Press all have their orders to shriek and scream at you, to demand a searching inquiry regarding the disposal of certain sums set apart for the army – even to the giving of contracts to German contractors.”
Morini started, and his grave face went paler.
“Then Borselli has betrayed me – he, who is equally guilty with myself?”
“To his friends who intend to obtain Government appointments at high salaries he is innocent, while you alone are guilty,” Ricci pointed out. Then, sighing again, he added in a sympathetic voice, – for although a political adventurer he was nevertheless a firm personal friend of the Minister’s, – “I declare to you, Camillo, I have done my very utmost. But the weak point in our armour is the Tresenta affair, and the signorina’s acquaintance with the traitor Solaro. The natural conclusion, of course, is that she assisted him.”
“But what do they say of his friendship for her?”
“They allege that she was in love with him, but that, being only an officer with little else but his pay, he feared to approach you to obtain your permission to pay court to her, and that she, in order that he might obtain money from the French War Intelligence Department, gave him copies of certain secret documents which were in your possession.”
“But I have no plans of the Tresenta,” he declared quickly.
“There are other matters of which they allege the French have gained knowledge – details of the new mobilisation scheme.”
“Those papers are safely locked up at the Ministry,” he answered. “Mary has no knowledge of their existence.”
“If France obtained copies of them, would they be of service to her?”
“Of course. They would reveal our vulnerable points, and would show where she might strike us in order to destroy the concentration of our troops upon the frontier. Those papers are the most important of any we possess. The commanders of the various military districts have their secret orders, but they would be useless without the key to the complete scheme, which is kept safely from prying eyes in the Ministry. The French have surely not obtained a copy of that!” he gasped.
“It seems that they have – through your daughter, it is alleged.” Then he added, with a sigh, “They have all their facts ready to launch against you.”
“Their untruths – their lies!” he cried desperately, clenching his fist. “Ah, it is cruel! It is infamous! They even go so far as to brand my daughter – my dear Mary – as a traitress!”
And the strong man of Italy – the ruler of a European army – covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud.
Vito Ricci had failed, yet was it any wonder that Morini’s enemies sought to attack his honour by making false and ignominious allegations against his daughter?
The unhappy man looked into the future of ruin, disgrace, perhaps prosecution by those very men who had been his friends, and saw but one way open from that shame – death.
And yet was not such a thought irreligious and cowardly? If they intended to attack his daughter, was it not his duty to defend her and vindicate her good name?
Ricci, unscrupulous as he had been through years of political life, sometimes holding by his intrigues the very fate of Italy in his hands, stood by in silence, his chin sunk upon his breast, for he knew too well that the ill-judged man to whom he was indebted for so much was to be made the scapegoat of the corrupt Ministry – he knew that the man before him was doomed, and yet he was utterly powerless to save him, even though he was prepared to go to any length to attain that end.
Then, a moment later, when Camillo Morini thought of that degraded officer, silent and suffering in the gloom of his prison, his mouth hardened, he held his breath, and his jaws became hard set. He remembered how that accused man had broken his sword before him and cast the pieces at his feet as guage of his innocence.
Yet the die was cast. To-day he, Camillo Morini, was Italian Minister of War, and the trusted adviser of his sovereign, King Umberto. But to-morrow – to-morrow? Ah! would that the morrow could not come.
